Major Inflations In History

‘. . . a collection of important articles which will be most useful for students of monetary disorder.’
– Nigel W. Duck, The Economic Journal

‘. . . Major Inflations in History serves as a useful reference on the study of inflation. It examines the causes of major inflations and extracts lessons from the experiences. The strength of the volume lies in the variety of perspectives used to analyse inflation. Students of the current crisis in the former Soviet Union would do well to read this book.
– Christopher M. Otrok, The Southern Economic Journal

This volume is concerned with periods of very rapid inflation in the period before 1950 and shifts the emphasis from hyperinflation as commonly defined to a wider range of experience. It examines the source and origins of these inflationary episodes, how they started and what measures were used to bring them to an end. The experience of the last twenty years, when the entire world has been on fiat money and inflation has burgeoned, sometimes in excess of 100 per cent per annum, has led economists to reflect on historical examples of this phenomena.

The extreme nature of episodes such as the German inflation of the early 1920s ensures that they offer a special kind of evidence on money and prices that is of considerable interest at the present time. Much of the material here is very recent, as relatively little contemporary attention was given to inflations and much of the best scholarship has only appeared in the last twenty years. However, this volume also provides the reader with access to the reflections of contemporary economists, such as Joan Robinson and Gordon Tullock.

Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Sources, Development and Ending of Major Inflations
1. Forrest Capie (1986), ‘Conditions in which Very Rapid Inflation has Appeared’
2. Phillip Cagan (1956), ‘The Monetary Dynamics of Hyperinflation’
3. Thomas J. Sargent (1982), ‘The Ends of Four Big Inflations’
Part II: Inflations before 1900
4. Francis T. Lui (1983), ‘Cagan's Hypothesis and the First Nationwide Inflation of Paper Money in World History’
5. Bruce D. Smith (1985), ‘Some Colonial Evidence on Two Theories of Money: Maryland and the Carolinas’
6. Earl J. Hamilton (1977), ‘The Role of War in Modern Inflation’
7. Andrew Dickson White (1959), ‘Fiat Money Inflation in France’
8. Milton Friedman (1951), ‘The Role of War in American Economic Development: Prices, Income and Monetary Changes in Three Wartime Periods’
9. Eugene M. Lerner (1954), ‘The Monetary and Fiscal Programs of the Confederate Government, 161–65’
10. Eugene M. Lerner (1955), ‘Money, Prices and Wages in the Confederacy’
Part III: The 1920s
11. Costantion Bresciani-Turroni (1937), ‘The National Finances, the Inflaton and the Depreciation of the Mark’
12. Joan Robinson (1938), ‘Review of Bresciani-Turroni's The Economics of Inflation’
13. Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich (1986), ‘The Determinants of Monetary Expansion’
14. Stephen B. Webb (1985), ‘Government Debt and Inflationary Expectations as Determinants of the Money Supply in Germany’
15. Charles Maier (1978), ‘The Politics of Inflation in the Twentieth Century’
16. Rodney L. Jacobs (1977), ‘Hyperinflation and the Supply of Money’
Part IV: Inflations in the 1940s
17 Bertrand Nogaro (1948), ‘Hungary's Recent Monetary Crisis and its Theoretical Meaning’
18. Andrew C. Huang (1948), ‘The Inflation in China’
19. Colin D. Campbell and Gordan C. Tullock (1954), ‘Hyperinflation in China, 1937–49’
20. Gail E. Makinen (1986), ‘The Greek Hyperinflation and Stabilization of 1943–46’
21. William A. Bomberger and Gail E. Makinen (1983), ‘The Hungerian Hyperinflation and Stabilization of 1945–6’
Name Index